Arts 8c Entertainment

On The Tube

L

r

3

I

r - 1 r

f

Bi b le

MICHAEL ELKIN
Special to the Jewish News

T

he miniseries In the Beginning, which begins
a four-hour, two-night run Sunday, Nov.
12, on NBC, is a broadcast of biblical pro-
portions.
In the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille's sweeping epic
The Ten Commandments, the earliest stories of the
Bible come to life in this production, featuring an all-
star international cast and spectacular, state-of-the-art
special effects.
The classic stories include Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, the lives of Abraham, Isaac and
Joseph, and Moses' struggle to lead his people out of
Egyptian slavery and give them God's moral law before
they enter the Promised Land.
And is it any surprise that father figure Martin
Landau — one of Hollywood's most revered actors —
should play the reverential Abraham, in what may be
the greatest story ever told by the network?
For Landau, who played the game of espionage as
one of the stars of TV's classic Mission: Impossible, his
current mission is imposing. The patriarchal performer
isn't sacrificing any inside information when conceding
that Abraham has always been his favorite biblical tale.
"He was a fellow with an amazing kind of faith and
trust when the people followed him without really
knowing where they were going," he says of Abraham,
the seminal source for so many of the world's great
religions.
In the Beginning follows a trail of more than 75 regal
roles Landau has landed over the years, highlighted by
an Oscar for the film Ed Wood in 1994.
While the actor has had a healthy career in
Hollywood, every role leaves its remnants, says the
much-lauded Landau. 'After I play any role, there is a
difference" in the way he thinks of life, says the actor.
The feelings left by playing Abraham don't desert
him now: "Our lives are simple compared to what
they had to put up with," he says of the Israelites of
pre-Promised Land times.
It was, says Landau of the moving miniseries, a reli-
gious experience. "When you realize the kind of faith
that these people had in God and in each other, it has
to have an effect on you, and it has on me."
The Brooklyn-born and -bred actor braved the bris-
tling winds of the Moroccan desert where much of
the series was shot — in good fashion. Indeed, with

Michael Elkin is entertainment editor at the Jewish
Exponent in Philadelphia.

1/10
2000

86

"In the Beginning" features a
familiar roster of characters with
a lot of special effects.

the 80-mile-an-hour wind whipping up his robes, he
looked very much the image of cover man for GQ-
Genesis Quarterly.
"Almost every time God talked to me [in the film]
— or I talked to God - we had a windstorm. And it
looks like special effects because my robe is whipping
in the wind and-the sand is flying."
Was it all beshert? Does
Landau divine some
Divine interven-
tion? Maybe, he
says. "There
may be some-
thing to
that."
The

father of two daughters felt the heed of history and
heritage as the father of Isaac in In the Beginning. The
film helped Landau firm up an already solid commit-
ment to his Jewish connections.
"It's nothing cerebral," says the thinking-man's actor
of what happened to him during the shoot.
"It was just something that happened —
where I felt more of an affinity for
being Jewish. Just playing Abraham
— when you're doing 10 pages of
dialogue, delivering a speech
about Creation — well,
it talks to your heart, he
says of the Jewish soul
music he heard in the
BIBLE on page 88